There exist histories that can be neither transmitted nor ignored: only re-opened, by dealing with something that refers to the past and yet still insists on the surface of the present – like a ruin. Starting from a sentence («not a story to pass on») obsessively repeated in the epilogue of Tony Morrison’s novel Beloved, and passing through, respectively, a series of Walter Benjamin’s well known fragments, a more recent book by W.G. Sebald and a postcolonial perspective on ruination suggested by Ann-Laura Stoler, the article explores the possibility of a political interpretation of ruins. It questions their anachronistic persistente and suggests we conceive of them as living entities whose specific affordance may subvert both history and its narration.
Not a story to pass on. Appunti per una teoria delle rovine
RAHOLA, FEDERICO
2017-01-01
Abstract
There exist histories that can be neither transmitted nor ignored: only re-opened, by dealing with something that refers to the past and yet still insists on the surface of the present – like a ruin. Starting from a sentence («not a story to pass on») obsessively repeated in the epilogue of Tony Morrison’s novel Beloved, and passing through, respectively, a series of Walter Benjamin’s well known fragments, a more recent book by W.G. Sebald and a postcolonial perspective on ruination suggested by Ann-Laura Stoler, the article explores the possibility of a political interpretation of ruins. It questions their anachronistic persistente and suggests we conceive of them as living entities whose specific affordance may subvert both history and its narration.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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